These Spectacular Clouds Over Cape Town Aren’t UFOs, But They Are Out of This World

Sure, this post is titled a bit curiously. “Wait a minute,” you’re probably thinking. “What kinds of mistakes do I have to start making before I start seeing UFOs?” Ah, I too wish it were only that simple… hence, before I go any further, I’d best clarify a bit.

Earlier today, SiFy Network featured a roundup at their website detailing the “Top 10 most common explanations for UFOs.” Sure, conventional wisdom doesn’t seem to conflict with many of the items included in SiFy’s list being mistaken for alien spacecraft, including meteors, the planet Venus (now there’s a classic), ball lightning and even “experimental military aircraft,” which ranked at number one (while regular, non-military aircraft came in close behind at second place). But the thing that always get’s me going when I see articles like this is that, as a matter of definition, many of these things actually are UFOs!

Think I’m kidding, or maybe just crazy? Before you begin casting stones, follow my rational for a moment, since when we get right down to the matter of definition, this observation actually does begin to make sense. Simply put, the acronym “UFO” doesn’t stand for “Unwanted Foreign Occupants,” or anything that specifically entails an actual extraterrestrial spacecraft. Instead, the popular term merely denotes the presence of an Unidentified Flying Object. Arguably, the funniest thing about all this is that what I’m pointing out here is so well known–even among those who don’t consider themselves UFO buffs–that it’s almost silly to devote time to spelling it out; and yet, somewhere along the way, the notion that a “UFO” is a term that specifically refers to an alien craft obviously began to take shape. How did this happen?

It’s rather difficult to nail down exactly what caused this to occur, much less find an exact date, although when viewing the Wikipedia entry for the term UFO, the authors note a similar aspect regarding the way the definition began to evolve after its inception in the early 1950s:

The United States Air Force, which coined the term in 1952, initially defined UFOs as those objects that remain unidentified after scrutiny by expert investigators, though today the term UFO is colloquially used to refer to any unidentifiable sighting regardless of whether it has been investigated.

Although it is not directly implied that the United States Air Force intended “unknowns” to be accepted as alien visitors, they certainly remained unaccounted for according to USAF records once official investigations turned up empty-handed. Again, many would argue that UFOs today–whether or not they’ve been investigated–are most often also associated with alien visitors from other planets, rather than foreign military craft and other terrestrial possibilities. The last place these things appear to come from is anywhere on Earth, right? Hence, following this logic (and maybe a healthy dose of Occam’s Razor) we can see how easily the notion could have developed over time that if these strange objects are seen in the sky, it’s only rational to conclude that they descended into view from even greater heights (outer space), and that they are likely visitors from other worlds.

When it comes to its application, “UFO” was also a more all-inclusive term for use with the variety of strange objects people began reporting after WWII, especially after pilot Kenneth Arnold’s famous sighting of “flying saucers” over Mount Ranier, Washington, in 1947. Ironically, the craft Arnold spotted weren’t really “saucers” either, but were half-moon shaped, although Arnold had noted they flew “like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water.” “UFO” wouldn’t begin to see common use until five years after Arnold’s sighting, but the test of time proved it to be the more popular name in the long run, and by the mid 1950s, various “contactees” claiming to have made contact with spacemen were morphing their wild stories from secluded seances into physical encounters with occupants of UFO craft (often claiming they traveled here from neighboring planets like Mars or Venus, which are less than impressive locales by today’s standards).

The way we perceive UFOs as a culture, right down to nit-picky little definitions, is a fascinating subject when we consider the way our attitudes and beliefs toward them have changed over time; and no doubt are continuing to change in ways we may not yet perceive. How will we treat the subject ten years, or even ten decades from now? Who knows… but one thing is for certain: next time you spot something bizarre and unexplainable in the night sky, you can proudly proclaim with a degree of certainty to those around you, “yes, that is indeed a UFO!”

A meteoroid as seen from the Space Station… make a wish!

At the end of 2015, people in southern California freaked out when they saw a bright white light shoot across the night sky. 

The real story? Space dandruff, which are things that have shed off space vehicles during flight, like ice flakes, paint chips, or fragments of insulation. They're different to space junk, because they don't pose a real threat to spacecraft, Oberg explains on his site.

The conclusion? Most of your "insane UFO sightings" are little more than 'space dandruff', or your brain misunderstanding of what space travel actually looks like, says Oberg. 

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

UFOs are all the buzz lately… and have been ever since the initial reporting by the New York Times about the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program in December of 2017.

Since that time, further information has seeped forth at a slow trickle, with recent events including confirmation that the Pentagon had been behind the release of unusual footage promoted by the To the Stars Academy, a private UFO study group that also has various commercial interests. The group is headed by former Blink 182 frontman Tom DeLonge, although Luis Elizondo, former head of the Pentagon’s UFO program, is also a member.

In recent news, an announcement by the US Navy reported previously here at Mysterious Universe announced plans to draft new procedures for UFO reporting. Speaking with the San Francisco Gate, Joe Gradisher, a spokesperson with the office of the deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare, further stated that this information would include sensitive classified data, and therefore would not be released to the public.

“Any report generated as a result of these investigations will, by necessity, include classified information on military operations,” Gradisher said.

With this in mind, it remains in question just how much information about ongoing UFO studies the public would be made aware of (although the Navy’s acknowledgment does raise hopes for the possibility of Freedom of Information Act requests, which might allow proper civilian channels for accessing certain government records, albeit in redacted form).

Despite the necessity for secrecy in UFO reporting by government agencies like the Navy and USAF, there is still some compelling information about UFO incidents that the government has made available in recent years. It is accessible on account of the simple fact that it was never classified in the first place; however one has to know where to look in order to find it.

John Podesta admitted on Twitter that his biggest regret was “not being part of Alien Disclosure” whilst working under Obama!

The Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) is an online database which logs incident reports related to possible aviation safety hazards. For the last several decades, the ASRS has been maintained by NASA, and allows aviation professionals in various lines of work to report potential concerns anonymously (so as to remove concerns over things like future litigation).

The bulk of the information presented in the ASRS reports deals with issues pertaining to electronic or mechanical problems, as well as weather-related issues and other similar things. Some reports also relate to concerns about collision avoidance, whether between two separate aircraft, or between aircraft and objects or animals (birds hitting aircraft during initial ascent is another frequent happening).

Then there are the odd reports that, while remaining in the distinct minority, nonetheless convey some of the really unusual things going on in our skies.

One of my favorites is an incident that occurred in August of 2015, where a pilot observed an extremely unusual object at approximately 3,500 feet in altitude, and a distance of five miles Northeast of Windham High Peak in Greene County, New York. 

According to the incident report: 

I was piloting and had a passenger along for his first flight. We could not see any kind of wings, rotors, or form of propulsion. Unfortunately, my camera was stuck in my pocket under tight seat belts and I couldn’t get it out while flying the glider trying to avoid hitting this thing.

It was about 6 feet tall, 2-3 feet wide. Top of UAV was extremely radiant, with black half sphere under the radiant top and what appeared to be an antenna under the half sphere, we watched it skimming over the tree tops below and to the right of our flight path. It was moving at a fast speed southwest toward Windham High Peak. It had a very sparkling appearance like sun shining on a mirror with rainbow colors. I was flying northeast from Windham High Peak at about 3500 feet. As we watched the UAV I banked to the left and half way through the turn and now pointing at Windham High Peak, the UAV turned around and came toward us at a high rate of speed. As I got 3/4 of the way through the turn was within 50 yards of my right wing, quickly got in front of me and followed me around the turn getting closer until it was off my left wing, probably no more than 25-30 yards away. It covered about 5 miles in just a few seconds. We had a really good view of it.

The report concludes with an interesting twist: the pilot notes that as the object left its position off of his left wing, the passenger flying with him “looked up and saw two more UAVs come out of the cloud directly over us.” The pilot, seemingly unnerved by the experience, told his passenger they were “returning immediately to the airport,” at this point.

“I pushed the nose down and picked up speed,” the final line of the report reads. “The UAVs then headed to the west at a fast speed.” 

Standard procedure with ASRS reports of any kind usually involves at least one follow up call, in order to glean any additional details that might be determined about the incident in question. With relation to the incident above, additional commentary was provided by the agent who made the follow up, who noted the following:

The reporter estimated at first visual contact the UAV was approximately 3.5 miles away down the hill. It sped up hill to the reporter’s aircraft at a much higher speed than the aircraft. The reporter estimated the closure took less than a minute and as he accelerated his aircraft away from the craft it followed, maneuvering at a speed much high than his. Two other similar shaped UAVs also had brilliant tops but colors somewhat different from the first which was a shimmering, brilliant rainbow type light.

It’s a tantalizing story, to say the least. While it certainly leaves determinations about what the “UAVs” was a bit open-ended, it nonetheless appears to convey a genuine concern on part of the pilot (enough so, obviously, that he or she felt compelled to file an incident report with the ASRS).

It is also just one of several reports of “unknowns” that appear in the database, although the majority of reports that involve unknown or unconventional aircraft are either indistinct, or they describe objects that more closely resemble some kind of unmanned aerial vehicle or projectile. The prevalence of the latter of these two, in fact, served as part of the basis for my own inquiry into “ghost rocket” reports since the end of World War II (the name is borrowed specifically from the sightings of projectile-like objects over Scandinavia in 1946, although I apply it more broadly in my book The Ghost Rockets: Mystery Missiles and Phantom Projectiles in Our Skies).

Although many of the ASRS reports of unidentified craft aren’t as exciting as the case outlined above, they nonetheless point to an odd prevalence of unusual things in U.S. airspace, which were of obvious concern to the pilots and aviation professionals who encountered them. Whether or not the Navy and other agencies are able to disclose information from their forthcoming inquiries, the fact alone that they have publicly stated an intent emphasize their UAP studies is noteworthy.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

SpaceX Rocket Live Cam Cuts Out, Faked Rocket Landing? May 3, 2019, UFO Sighting And Alien News.

Date of event: May 3, 2019 (Taiwan Time)
Location of event: USA

Now I was watching the live coverage of the rockets taking off and landing, but a glitch happened at the very moment that last rocket was to land. If it lands well, its the first time ever that SpaceX had a 100% successful return and landing of all rockets. After the cam cuts out, the announcers tell the audience it had already landed. Camera returns and the rocket is sitting comfortably on the platform as if it had been there all day. 

It seems to me this was too coincidental  That the last rocket may have fallen into the ocean and so a crane replaced it with another rocket on the pad. The rocket we were looking at could have actually been an old one that had fallen into the water and was still on board the recovery ship. If you were 500 million or more in debt to banks...as news says Tesla is, would you be desperate enough to fake a landing? They called it a historical moment.

So...watch the video and tell me your thoughts in the comments below please. 
Scott C. Waring

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

UFO Photo Near Area 51, Joshua Tree, California, Possibly USAF Secret Craft, April 28, 2019, UFO Sighting News.

Source: MUFON #10061
Date of sighting: April 28, 2019
Location of sighting: Joshua Tree, California

The eyewitness states that he went home and found this UFO on his vacation photos of Joshua Tree, CA. So he noticed it after the event, but cameras optics captured it well. 

Now this sighting in Joshua Tree is just 200 miles from Area 51. Yeah I measured it with google map. That being the case, its highly probable that this is a USAF experimental craft from Area S4 within Area 51. Area S4 is the part of the base were nuclear physicist Bob Lazar worked on one of eight alien disks. Each disk was a bit different. 

The focus of the UFO and the mountains match perfectly as do the shadows. This is a real photo and the craft is about 10 meters across and notice the hump in the upper middle. It a classic disk, clearly USAF top secret kind of stuff happening here. 
Scott C. Waring

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

The Mysterious Genius Who Patented the UFO

Alexander Weygers, a Renaissance man in the mold of the tech industry’s stated ideal, inspired an art dealer to become an acolyte.

Alexander Weygers made numerous detailed drawings of an aircraft called the “Discopter”, a vertical liftoff aircraft that looked very much like what was to be later termed “flying saucer” and other drawings of an American cities specifically flying saucers in San Francisco and as well as a port in Chicago.

He sent these detailed plans to all the branches of the U.S. Military and was eventually told that they were intrigued by the concept and the design of the craft but were not prepared at that time because the war effort superseded its development.

However he did indeed patent the design for the “Discopter” in January 1944 with the U.S. Patent Office and it served as the prototype for other similar aircraft that have been developed up to the present day.

Ashlee Vance visits the dealer whose curiosity about Weygers has evolved into an obsession.

• https://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/ }

Russian Strange Ray of Light Emerges From The Sky Captured on Camera

Russian photographer Zhiganov, who initially planned to photograph some of his friends lounging in a hot tub with the aurora overhead in the city of Aptity, Russia quickly changed when he noticed a strange phenomenon, explained as a vertical aurora, in the sky upon he started to film it.
 

“It was the first time I ever saw an aurora in such a rarified form” Zhiganov said but I wonder whether it was an aurora or some sort of a laser/plasma beam since it turned into an enormous bright sphere that moved across the surface until it disappeared.

Here is the amazing video and please decide for yourself whether it is a rare vertical aurora or not.  

 https://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/ }

United States Navy Says They Will Not Allow the American Public to Read UFO Reports That Pilots File With the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program

The U.S. Navy has drafted a procedure to investigate and catalogue reports of unidentified flying objects coming in from its pilots. But the service doesn’t expect to make the information public, citing privileged and classified reporting that is typically included in such files.

Bible believers know that we are not alone in this universe, extraterrestrial beings are all through the pages of scripture, in both Testaments. Little green men? Not so much. But a King on a flying white horse with an army of redeemed soldiers flying behind Him through Outer Space? You better believe it.

“Then I turned, and lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold a flying roll.” Zechariah 5:1 (KJV)

Jesus said that the time of Jacob’s trouble would be like it was in the ‘days of Noah’, when half-breed fallen angel children roamed the earth and God destroyed it all with a flood. If you are interested in the bizarre, the unexplained, 7-headed red dragons, zombies, flying UFOs people coming back from the dead and aliens from Outer Space, then dust off your King James Bible and take it for a spin. It’s the wildest, most unbelievable Book ever written, and it’s all true.

UFO information not expected to go to general public, Navy says

FROM SFGATE: Joe Gradisher, a spokesman for the office of the deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare, said in a statement that the Navy expects to keep the information it gathers private for a number of reasons.

“Military aviation safety organizations always retain reporting of hazards to aviation as privileged information in order to preserve the free and honest prioritization and discussion of safety among aircrew,” Gradisher said. “Furthermore, any report generated as a result of these investigations will, by necessity, include classified information on military operations.”

He added, “Therefore, no release of information to the general public is expected.”

The Navy’s recent decision to draft formal guidelines for pilots to document encounters with unexplained aerial phenomena comes after the revelation in late 2017 that the Pentagon ran a secret “UFO” office that spent $22 million over five years to collect and analyze “anomalous aerospace threats.” Funding for the office, known as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, or AATIP, officially ended in 2012, though operations continued.

Among other things, the program resulted in the release of footage from the cockpit cameras of military aircraft, which appeared to document oval-shape vessels that resemble flying Tic Tacs.

Reports of curious sightings from military aircraft aren’t new. During World War II, Allied military pilots witnessed unexplained objects and fireballs that they dubbed “foo fighters.” A number of official government investigations looked into such phenomena in the postwar period.

Now, the Navy has agreed to a more formalized process for cataloguing and investigating reports from pilots, a decision welcomed by former U.S. officials who want the military to take the matter seriously and remove the stigma in the armed forces of reporting such incidents. READ MORE

Watch US Navy Jet Lock Scope On UFO

A U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet encountered this apparent UFO off the East Coast of the United States in 2015.

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/ }

Why alien life no longer seems like science fiction: Expert claims recent discoveries including organic compounds on Mars suggest finding ET is 'inevitable and possibly imminent'

• Discoveries over the last few decades have made alien life seem more realistic 
• Complex organic chemistry is common, as are potentially habitable exoplanets
• Some of the conditions for life seem to be duplicated elsewhere in solar system

By CATHAL D. O'CONNELL FOR THE CONVERSATION

Extraterrestrial life, that familiar science-fiction trope, that kitschy fantasy, that CGI nightmare, has become a matter of serious discussion, a 'risk factor', a 'scenario'.

How has ET gone from sci-fi fairytale to a serious scientific endeavour modelled by macroeconomists, funded by fiscal conservatives and discussed by theologians?

Because, following a string of remarkable discoveries over the past two decades, the idea of alien life is not as far-fetched as it used to seem.

Discovery now seems inevitable and possibly imminent.

 Extraterrestrial life, that familiar science-fiction trope, that kitschy fantasy, that CGI nightmare, has become a matter of serious discussion, a 'risk factor', a 'scenario'. Artist's impression

It's just chemistry

While life is a special kind of complex chemistry, the elements involved are nothing special: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and so on are among the most abundant elements in the universe. Complex organic chemistry is surprisingly common.

Amino acids, just like those that make up every protein in our bodies, have been found in the tails of comets. There are other organic compounds in Martian soil.

And 6,500 light years away a giant cloud of space alcohol floats among the stars.

Habitable planets seem to be common too. The first planet beyond our Solar System was discovered in 1995. Since then astronomers have catalogued thousands.

Based on this catalogue, astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley worked out there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized exoplanets in the so-called 'habitable zone' around their star, where temperatures are mild enough for liquid water to exist on the surface.

There's even a potentially Earth-like world orbiting our nearest neighbouring star, Proxima Centauri. 

At just four light years away, that system might be close enough for us to reach using current technology. With the Breakthrough Starshot project launched by Stephen Hawking in 2016, plans for this are already afoot.

Life is robust

It seems inevitable other life is out there, especially considering that life appeared on Earth so soon after the planet was formed.

The oldest fossils ever found here are 3.5 billion years old, while clues in our DNA suggest life could have started as far back as 4 billion years ago, just when giant asteroids stopped crashing into the surface.

Our planet was inhabited as soon as it was habitable – and the definition of 'habitable' has proven to be a rather flexible concept too.

Life survives in all manner of environments that seem hellish to us:

• floating on a lake of sulphuric acid
• inside barrels of nuclear waste
• in water superheated to 122 degrees
• in the wastelands of Antarctica
• in rocks five kilometres below ground.

Tantalisingly, some of these conditions seem to be duplicated elsewhere in the Solar System.

Snippets of promise

Mars was once warm and wet, and was probably a fertile ground for life before the Earth.

Today, Mars still has liquid water underground. One gas strongly associated with life on Earth, methane, has already been found in the Martian atmosphere, and at levels that mysteriously rise and fall with the seasons. 

(However, the methane result is under debate, with one Mars orbiter recently confirming the methane detection and another detecting nothing.)

Martian bugs might turn up as soon as 2021 when the ExoMars rover Rosalind Franklin will hunt for them with a two-metre drill.

Besides Earth and Mars, at least two other places in our Solar System might be inhabited. 

Humanity's best hope for finding alien life may be Saturn's moon Enceladus (pictured). Scientists say the icy celestial body is the only world in the solar system other than Earth with all the ingredients needed for life

In 2017, specialists in sea ice from the University of Tasmania concluded that some Antarctic microbes could feasibly survive on these worlds. 

Both Europa and Enceladus have undersea hydrothermal vents, just like those on Earth where life may have originated.

When a NASA probe tasted the material geysered into space out of Enceladus last June it found large organic molecules. 

Possibly there was something living among the spray; the probe just didn't have the right tools to detect it.

Russian billionaire Yuri Milner has been so enthused by this prospect, he wants to help fund a return mission.

A second genesis?

A discovery, if it came, could turn the world of biology upside down.

All life on Earth is related, descended ultimately from the first living cell to emerge some 4 billion years ago.

Bacteria, fungus, cacti and cockroaches are all our cousins and we all share the same basic molecular machinery: DNA that makes RNA, and RNA that makes protein.

A second sample of life, though, might represent a 'second genesis' – totally unrelated to us. 

Perhaps it would use a different coding system in its DNA. Or it might not have DNA at all, but some other method of passing on genetic information.

By studying a second example of life, we could begin to figure out which parts of the machinery of life are universal, and which are just the particular accidents of our primordial soup.

Perhaps amino acids are always used as essential building blocks, perhaps not.

We might even be able to work out some universal laws of biology, the same way we have for physics – not to mention new angles on the question of the origin of life itself.

A second independent 'tree of life' would mean that the rapid appearance of life on Earth was no fluke; life must abound in the universe.

It would greatly increase the chances that, somewhere among those billions of habitable planets in our galaxy, there could be something we could talk to.

Perhaps life is infectious

If, on the other hand, the discovered microbes were indeed related to us that would be a bombshell of a different kind: it would mean life is infectious.

When a large meteorite hits a planet, the impact can splash pulverised rock right out into space, and this rock can then fall onto other planets as meteorites.

Life from Earth has probably already been taken to other planets – perhaps even to the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. Microbes might well survive the trip.

In 1969, Apollo 12 astronauts retrieved an old probe that had sat on the Moon for three years in extreme cold and vacuum – there were viable bacteria still inside.

As Mars was probably habitable before Earth, it's possible life originated there before hitchhiking on a space rock to here. Perhaps we're all Martians.

Even if we never find other life in our Solar System, we might still detect it on any one of thousands of known exoplanets.

It is already possible to look at starlight filtered through an exoplanet and tell something about the composition of its atmosphere; an abundance of oxygen could be a telltale sign of life.

A testable hypothesis

The James Webb Space Telescope, planned for a 2021 launch, will be able to take these measurements for some of the Earth-like worlds already discovered.

Just a few years later will come space-based telescopes that will take pictures of these planets directly.

Using a trick a bit like the sun visor in your car, planet-snapping telescopes will be paired with giant parasols called starshades that will fly in tandem 50,000 kilometres away in just the right spot to block the blinding light of the star, allowing the faint speck of a planet to be captured.

The colour and the variability of that point of light could tell us the length of the planet's day, whether it has seasons, whether it has clouds, whether it has oceans, possibly even the colour of its plants.

The ancient question 'Are we alone?' has graduated from being a philosophical musing to a testable hypothesis. We should be prepared for an answer.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

Bruce Dorminey

Contributor

TWEET THIS

• bacteria can travel interstellar distances
• one gram of bacteria can be encoded with some 900 terabytes of data

Earth from ISS

 CREDIT: NASA MARSHALL SPACE FLIGHT CENTER

Could the microbes that surround us actually be encoded with interstellar messages from some far-flung race of space aliens? It’s a question that has been posed for decades by some members of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) community. But most recently it was tackled by longtime space advocate Robert Zubrin, at this month’s ‘Breakthrough Discuss 2019’ conference at the University of California at Berkeley.

Given that we are now capable of sequencing the entire human genome, it’s not so far-fetched to think that we might be well-served to look for patterns, even messages in strands of bacterial DNA. Such microbes might make the perfect conduit for an interstellar Encyclopedia Galactica.

The idea is that once they are launched intentionally or even unintentionally, bacteria can travel interstellar distances and potentially seed the universe with messages from whoever encrypted them.

An individual bacterium --- which typically ranges in size between one and ten-millionths of a meter --- can easily replicate itself. But how could such tiny microbes naturally overcome their star’s gravity in order to make an interstellar journey?

Most likely through light pressure from their star’s outflow of photons, Zubrin, an astronautical engineer who is founder and president of The Mars Society, told me. This method of bacteria transmission would work best for brighter stars such as F-, G-, and K- spectral type stars. However, Zubrin notes that Red dwarf M-stars, the cosmos’ most ubiquitous, might have a difficult time pushing their bacteria outside their solar systems.

Yet if a bacterial colony was strongly magnetized, as Zubrin noted in a 2017 article posted on the popular space blog, Centauri Dreams, it might be able to act as a miniature magnetic sail. If so, it would, in theory, catch a 500 kilometer-per-second solar wind. That’s more than enough to propel it out of the solar system.

In contrast, if a manufactured microbial solar sail were shot out of the Earth’s gravity by a rocket and released into near-Earth space, it would be blown out of the solar system at approximately Earth’s speed around the Sun, or 30 kilometers-per-second. Thus, it would travel a light year every 10,000 years, and be able to reach nearby stars in less than 50,000 years. And Zubrin says the point is that at least some of these bacteria would survive such a trip.

DNA structure

CREDIT: WIKIPEDIA

But they wouldn’t have an easy time of it. They would be subject to high doses of both cosmic ray and ultraviolet radiation that would be close to the limit of survivability for even hardy microbial species such as Deinococcus radiodurans. But Zubrin is adamant that out of the initial billions of bacterium cells sent, at least some would survive and get through; thus, preserving the message in the process.

Researchers here on Earth have already proven that they can successfully encode information in bacterial DNA. As Zubrin noted in this month’s Berkeley talk, microbiologists at Columbia University and The New York Genome Project demonstrated their ability to encode information with a density of 215,000 terabytes per gram of DNA.

By current estimates, one gram of bacteria can be encoded with some 900 terabytes of data , or enough to fill about two billion 200-page books, says Zubrin.

If an alien civilization were to send such an extensive library of encoded DNA in a putative interstellar message, they could basically provide us with an Encyclopedia Galactica of everything they ever knew and could hope to know.

What would be involved in conducting such a search?

As Zubrin wrote in his article for Centauri Dreams, he hopes that buried somewhere in a bacteria’s so-called junk DNA, there might be an alien code of amino acids just waiting to be unscrambled and decoded by a top cryptologist.

We could look for messages that might conceivably be found in the genomes of multicellular organisms, says Zubrin. But he says that would require evidence that they were carrying genetic information not useful to bacteria. Finding such evidence would require the genetic sequencing of terrestrial genomes to look for either magic numbers (such as Pi) or other anomalous traits.

As Zubrin noted in his Berkeley talk, a good place to start looking for such encoded microbes would be to focus bacteria showing the strongest signs of most recent extraterrestrial origin. He noted that they might be found by: Subjecting bacterial to space conditions, to see which are adapted for spaceflight. Aerogel sampling to look for microbes in space. Looking for anomalous microbes in Earth’s stratosphere. Looking for microbes in the atmospheres of Mars, Venus, or Saturn’s moon of Titan. Or even looking for alien micro sailcraft in planetary atmospheres.

E.Coli bacteria

CREDIT: WIKIPEDIA

At this point, no one can say whether the evolution of life on Earth had outside help from natural or artificial panspermia --- the theory that life originated from microorganisms or chemical precursors of life present in outer space. But Zubrin seems convinced that life appeared on our own planet as soon as it was physically possible.

In fact, life appeared on Earth 3.8 billion years ago, virtually immediately after the end of the heavy asteroidal and cometary bombardment phase in the inner solar system that is thought to have precluded life on Earth prior to that, says Zubrin. Thus, he concludes that either life evolves quickly and easily from chemistry as soon as it has a chance. Or life was already floating around in space ready to land and multiply as soon as conditions on Earth became livable.

Because we find no evidence of pre-bacteria in Earth’s fossil record Zubrin thinks that it’s highly probable that bacterial life must have arrived here from interstellar space in one fell swoop.

I’m unaware of any free-living organisms on Earth that are equipped with fully-functional DNA/RNA information systems that are simpler than bacteria, says Zubrin.

“If natural or artificial panspermia were occurring, we would see the same general type of life everywhere, with no evidence of a prior evolutionary history of simpler forms,” said Zubrin.

But panspermia could take place naturally, via happenstance, the same way that meteorites from the Moon, Mars and the Main Asteroid Belt show up here on Earth. If we find microbes on Mars with the same information system as Earth, but no prior local evolutionary history that would support panspermia says Zubrin. But we would still need to show it was artificial panspermia, he says.

As for the civilization that sent the DNA message?

They could be very ancient and maybe even long gone.

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{ https://www.forbes.com/ }

Wat doet een ster die hier niet thuishoort in ons sterrenstelsel? - HLN.be

Bron: Scientas

Sterren zijn bolvormige hemellichamen die ontstaan uit interstellaire gaswolken. In die gaswolken zijn de druk en temperatuur zo hoog dat er kernfusiereacties plaatsvinden. De chemische elementen van de gaswolk gaan vervolgens, na de kernfusiereacties, ook deel uitmaken van de ster die ontstond.

Die uiteindelijke chemische samenstelling ziet er voor elke ster hetzelfde uit. Tenminste als ze in de buurt van elkaar – in ons Melkwegstelsel – ontstonden.

Lees ook

Ruimtetelescoop Hubble maakt haarscherpe foto van botsende sterrenstelsels

Uitzondering(en)

Daar lijkt J1124+4535 een uitzondering op de regel te zijn. De ster bevat relatief weinig magnesium en opvallend veel europium, wat erop wijst dat de ster niet echt thuishoort in ons sterrenstelsel. En J1124+4535 is niet alleen.

Wetenschappers vonden in het verleden al vaker ‘vreemde’ sterren terug in ons sterrenstelsel. Maar hoe kwamen die dan in onze Melkweg terecht? Wetenschappers vermoeden al een tijdje dat de buitenbeentjes in het verleden deel uitmaakten van een zogenaamd dwergsterrenstelsel, eentje met andere eigenschappen dan ons sterrenstelsel.

Onze Melkweg zou doorheen de tijd gefuseerd zijn met verschillende dwergsterrenstelsels waarna sterren met andere eigenschappen plots bij ons sterrenstelsel werden gevoegd. Dat gebeurde in het verleden, en de wetenschappers vermoeden dat het in de toekomst nog zal gebeuren.

Botsing van sterrenstelsels

Een botsing of een zogenaamde fusie van twee sterrenstelsels gaat gepaard met heel wat kleur, licht en vuurwerk – daar lijkt het althans op.

{ https://www.hln.be/ }

SpaceX confirmed that its Crew Dragon spaceship for NASA was ‘destroyed’ by a recent test. Here’s what we learned about the explosive failure.

Dave Mosher

Foto: SpaceX/Flickr (public domain)

A hover test of SpaceX's Dragon 2 capsule escape thrusters.

• SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Elon Musk, has built a new spaceship for NASA astronauts called Crew Dragon.
• The seven-person capsule made its first uncrewed spaceflight in March. It was supposed to fly astronauts this summer.
• But the same Crew Dragon spaceship exploded on April 20 during a ground test.
• SpaceX was relatively quiet after the incident. Today, the company executive Hans Koenigsmann provided several significant updates.
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Nearly two weeks after SpaceX said one of its spaceships suffered a testing “anomaly” – it exploded – an executive of Elon Musk’s aerospace company has provided fresh information and insights into the failure.

On April 20, SpaceX set out to test the escape thrusters of its Crew Dragon capsule, which isdesigned to fly NASA astronauts to and from orbit. The test was supposed to show that the ship’s engine clusters would ignite without incident. SpaceX was then planning to attach the capsule to a rocket in order to test the escape system mid-flight. If all of this had gone smoothly, that would have showed NASA that SpaceX’s launch system is capable of propelling astronauts out of a high-speed pickle if one arises. But that’s not what happened.

Instead, a Florida Today photographer captured worrisome images of pink smoke clouds rising from SpaceX’s test stand at Cape Canaveral. A video later appeared to show the Crew Dragon suffering an explosion.

“The initial tests completed successfully but the final test resulted in an anomaly on the test stand,” SpaceX said on the day of the failure. “Ensuring that our systems meet rigorous safety standards and detecting anomalies like this prior to flight are the main reasons why we test. Our teams are investigating and working closely with our NASA partners.”

SpaceX, which is typically forthcoming after its failures, has been unusually quiet about this one. Even Musk has yet to make a public statement on the matter.

On Thursday, however, Hans Koenigsmann – SpaceX’s vice president of mission assurance – revealed new details about the explosion during a press conference. (The event was supposed to focus on the company’s upcoming cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station, which is scheduled to launch 3:11 a.m. EDT on Friday.)

Here’s what we’ve learned from Koenigsmann – and other reporting – about the Crew Dragon’s testing failure.

1. The ship’s small escape thrusters fired OK, but something bad happened before its larger engines ignited

Koenigsmann said the Crew Dragon was attached to a stand in Cape Canaveral, where SpaceX typically lands its Falcon 9 rocket boosters for later reuse.

He said that during the engine test, the clusters of smaller Draco escape engines fired for about five seconds; that part was a success. But just moments before a follow-up test in which eight larger, more powerful Super Draco escape engines would ignite, something went wrong.

“Because this was a ground test, we have a high amount – a huge amount of data – from the vehicle and the ground sensors,” Koenigsmann said. “The initial data indicates that the anomaly occurred during the activation of the Super Draco system.”

By “activation,” Koenigsmann clarified: “You pressurize the system, make sure everything is primed in. You open valves, you close valves.”

2. SpaceX confirmed the capsule blew up, but key components survived intact

“The vehicle was destroyed,” Koenigsmann said. But he said that key parts survived the blast, including pressurized tanks the engines require called composite overwrapped pressure vessel (or COPVs). That may help SpaceX whittle down the list of potential causes of the explosion.

Koenigsmann speculated that neither the Super Draco engines nor the COPVs are to blame, given hundreds of prior tests during which they’ve worked just fine.

“We don’t have, currently, something where we could say, ‘Oh, it was most likely this or that.’ We do think – I think – it was not a Super Draco thruster itself,” he said. “But that’s pretty much all I can say at this time. It will take some time for us to go through the data and figure out what it was.”

3. SpaceX is cagey about it, but this video is almost certainly authentic-

A journalist asked Koenigsmann whether or not a viral video claiming to show the Crew Dragon exploding was authentic. The exec said he couldn’t comment on it because the clip “was not produced by us.”

However, the Orlando Sentinel reported on Tuesday that it had obtained an internal memo that a NASA contractor emailed to its employees. That memo read:

As most of you are aware, SpaceX conducted a test fire of their crew capsule abort engines at [Cape Canaveral Air Force Station], and they experienced an anomaly … Subsequently, video of the failed test – which was not released by SpaceX or NASA – appeared on the internet.

The Sentinel said the memo “confirms the video is authentic and the capsule did explode.”

4. SpaceX still lacks access to the test stand where its capsule exploded

Although it has been nearly two weeks since the explosion, Koenigsmann said SpaceX has yet to get its own up-close look at the testing stand where it happened.

When pressed on the matter, he seemed to indicate that this delay was for safety reasons, saying that some COPVs are still intact – and under immense pressure. The fact that the engines use a toxic oxidizer called dinitrogen tetroxide might also play a role in the limited site access.

5. A question about saltwater led to an interesting reaction by SpaceX

The Crew Dragon vehicle that SpaceX was testing has previously been sent into space. When it returned, it splashed into the Atlantic Ocean. Saltwater can harm metal and electronics.

So at the press conference, one reporter asked if any of SpaceX’s hundreds of tests of the Super Draco engines had ever used a system that was first exposed to saltwater.

“That’s a good question,” Koenigsmann said, seeming to pause and think for a moment. He was unable to provide an answer.

But he did say that the Super Draco system was “isolated and never used.”

SpaceX presumably inspected and cleaned all areas of the Crew Dragon where salt water got in before the April 20 test. But a spaceflight expert who spoke on the condition of anonymity told Business Insider “that doesn’t eliminate the possibility that [saltwater] was part of the problem.”

6. Two NASA astronauts who are supposed to fly inside the spacecraft called SpaceX after the blast

Another reporter asked if anyone at SpaceX had, following the anomaly, spoken with the NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley – the two men who are slated to fly Crew Dragon for the first time.

In fact, Koenigsmann said, the astronauts called SpaceX first.

“They were very sympathetic and reached out to us,” he said. “I almost feel like they’re encouraging us right now, and they are helping us in keeping our motivation and not falling into a hole, basically.”

7. Despite the failure, SpaceX is hopeful

It’s never comforting when a safety test ends in destruction. But Koenigsmann seemed upbeat about the prospects of rooting out the cause and moving forward.

“That is why we test. If this has to happen, I’d rather it happen on the ground in the development program,” he said. “We will take the lessons learned from this, and I’m convinced this will help us to ensure that Crew Dragon is one of the safest human spaceflight vehicles ever built.”

8. SpaceX might still launch its first astronauts before 2020

Before the failed test, SpaceX had hoped to launch Behnken and Hurley this summer.

When pressed about schedule changes as a result of the failure, Koenigsmann said he hopes “this is a relatively swift investigation” but added that he “didn’t want to completely preclude the current schedule.”

Koenigsmann said it’s still too early to tell what the result of the joint NASA-SpaceX investigation will be, given its early stage. The required fix could be a small or big change to the Crew Dragon or the way it’s operated.

In the meantime, Boeing may become the first private company to fly NASA astronauts, as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.

{ https://www.businessinsider.nl/ }

A Killer Asteroid Is Coming — We Don't Know When (So Let's Be Ready), Bill Nye Says

By Mike Wall /  Science & Astronomy 

The good news is, we can do something about it.

Artist's illustration of a potentially hazardous asteroid headed for Earth.

(Image: © ESA)

People are too complacent about the asteroid threat for Bill Nye's liking. 

The former TV "Science Guy," who currently serves as CEO of the nonprofit Planetary Society, warned that catastrophic impacts like the one that offed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago are not confined to the past.

"The Earth is going to get hit with another [big] asteroid," Nye said yesterday (May 2) at the International Academy of Astronautics'2019 Planetary Defense Conference in College Park, Maryland. 

• Related: Potentially Dangerous Asteroids (Images)

"The problem is, we don't know when," he added. "It's a very low probability in anyone's lifetime, but it's a very high-consequence event. If it happens, it would be like control-alt-delete for everything."

Unlike the dinosaurs, however, we don't just have to sit around and wait for doom to rain down on us. We can do something about the asteroid threat — and we should start prepping for it now, Nye stressed.

The first step is to find the dangerous space rocks. There's good news on this front: NASA scientists think they've already discovered more than 90% of the potential civilization-enders — near-Earth asteroids at least 0.6 miles (1 kilometers) wide — and none of these mountain-size space rocks pose a threat for the foreseeable future.

But there are lots of undiscovered asteroids zooming through near-Earth space that could do serious damage on a local scale — wiping out an area the size of a state, for example. So, it would behoove us to get some better detection tools online, Nye said.

Such help is coming, and soon. For instance, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, a big instrument set to start observing the heavens next year from Chile, will likely be able to discover and catalog 80% to 90% of potentially hazardous asteroids at least 460 feet (140 meters) wide, project team members say.

And NASA is considering launching a dedicated asteroid-hunter called the Near-Earth Object Camera. This proposed mission would scan for space rocks in infrared light, spotting their heat signatures in the darkness.

Coordination is the next step after detection, Nye said. A big asteroid hurtling toward Earth would be a global issue, so the international community would have to work together to deal with it. 

And we'd have several options at our disposal. If we had enough warning time — years or, preferably, decades — we could launch a probe to fly alongside the asteroid, gradually nudging the rock off course via a gravitational tug. This "gravity tractor" craft would ideally boost its pull by plucking a big boulder off the asteroid, said NASA Chief Scientist Jim Green, who participated in yesterday's event with Nye.

If we were pressed for time, we could slam one or more spacecraft into the asteroid, knocking it onto a benign trajectory through brute force. Or we could detonate a nuclear weapon near the rock, vaporizing much of its surface. The resulting mass loss, and the flow of material off the asteroid, would change the rock's path, experts say. And the shock wave from the blast might do the trick by itself, Nye said. 

Nye also mentioned the "Laser Bees" strategy, which involves sending a swarm of small spacecraft out to the potentially dangerous asteroid. Each little probe would focus a laser beam on the same spot on the rock, vaporizing material and causing a jet to erupt. This jet would serve as a sort of engine that would push the asteroid onto a different path.

During his portion of the presentation, Green highlighted the many things we can learn from asteroids — they're time capsules from the dawn of the solar system, after all, and carbon-rich rocks may have helped life get started on Earth — and their potential benefits for exploration. Tapping into asteroid resources could make voyaging spacecraft and astronauts more self-sufficient and improve life here on Earth as well, he said.

But Green agreed with Nye that the space-rock threat is real: There are catastrophic impacts in our future if we don't do something about them. 

"It's not a matter of if; it's only a matter of when," Green said.

• Deflecting Killer Asteroids Away From Earth: How We Could Do It
• Humanity Will Slam a Spacecraft into an Asteroid in a Few Years to Help Save Us All
• This Is NASA's New Plan to Detect and Destroy Asteroids Before They Hit Earth

Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now.

Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

{  https://www.space.com/ }

You’ve probably heard of the Hollow Earth theory – the idea that the planet is a mere shell with openings, usually at North and South poles, through which residents of the underworld can exit and surface dwellers can enter … if they dare. Edmond Halley – the noted astronomer, astronomer, geophysicist, mathematician and Halley’s Comet predictor – was an early proponent of the Hollow Earth theory. Now, a former NASA scientist has proposed a similar and equally radical theory – that the Earth was formed eons ago around a tiny black hole that still exists and is responsible for volcanoes, earthquakes, the planet’s magnetic field and more. Is this possible? Will it inspire any novels, movies, songs or Nazi conspiracy theories?

“Billions of years ago, Earth would have formed around this tiny black hole just as pearl forms around a grain of sand. That black hole would be responsible for generating Earth’s internal heat, which causes volcanoes and earthquakes but has also caused our island to form.”

According to her LinkedIn page, Louise Riofrio studied physics and astronomy at San Francisco State University and worked for ten years at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston assisting senior scientists in Oceaneering Space Systems. According to The Daily Star, she’s currently involved in a project to place an atomic clock on the International Space Station to test her other big theory that the speed of light is changing – something that could facilitate time travel. Any mention of time travel and the speed of light these days always brings in black holes, and Riofrio recently sat down with the website thirdphaseofmoon to discuss her ‘black hole in the center of the Earth’ theory. (Watch the interview here.)

A map of “The Interior World”, from The Goddess of Atvatabar by William Bradshaw (1892).

Yes, it does seem odd that a former NASA scientist currently working on an ISS project wouldn’t explain her theories in scientific journals rather than to a tabloid and a conspiracy theory website. Is this idea so radical that they won’t touch it?

“So then we do not have to fear black holes. Our life could not exist or our planet could not exist, if not for them. And in the future they could be an immense source of energy – something as revolutionary as nuclear power in the last century.”

Riofrio say the Earth’s black hole is the size of a grain of sand but has the weight of the Moon. She’s not proposing a Jules Verne journey to the center of the earth, but points out that CERN has been rumored to be creating tiny black holes on the surface.

“But do not worry. Even if there’s a black hole on this table, it would not suck us, and that’s just a simple math. Do not bother them, it would only sink to the bottom of the earth and hit the black hole there already. “

An interesting theory … and a possible movie plot. It would be nice if this or her ‘variable speed of light’ theory were reviewed by space scientists, physicists or astronomers, but there doesn’t seem to be any other information about them or Riofrio. Her book, The Speed of Light, was self-published in 2014 and doesn’t seem to have any peer reviews either.

While this ‘black hole in the center of the earth’ idea does have a certain sci-fi movie appeal, with so little evidence and no scientific reviews or rebuttals, the needle on the meter is heading for that black hole known as “highly skeptical.”

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

Scientists believe that we were closer than ever to finding proof of extraterrestrial life and some even say that it’s “imminent”. One expert said that there have been several clues over the last couple of decades that that point to the real possibility of alien life forms.

Water has been discovered on Mars and chemical elements are located throughout the universe, so there may be some type of life that existed elsewhere even if it was just microbial. Carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen are located throughout the cosmos, as well as amino acids “just like those that make up every protein in our bodies, have been found in the tails of comets,” said Cathal O’Connor who is a researcher and center manager at the University of Melbourne.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is scheduled to launch into space in 2021 as the replacement of the Hubble Telescope. Astronomers are optimistic that the new telescope will be able to prove the existence of alien life as it will be able to see 0.3 billion years after the Big Bang happened to when visible light began to form.

The telescope will also be able to see a lot further into space, meaning that it can measure the amounts of water, carbon dioxide, and other elements that are present in the atmosphere of distant exoplanets. They will additionally be able to tell how big the planets are and how far they are from their own suns in order to determine if they could sustain any form of life.

O’Connor wrote, “The James Webb Space Telescope, planned for a 2021 launch, will be able to take these measurements for some of the Earth-like worlds already discovered,” adding, “Just a few years later will come space-based telescopes that will take pictures of these planets directly.”

He then discussed the possibility of alien life by writing, “Following a string of remarkable discoveries over the past two decades, the idea of alien life is not as far-fetched as it used to seem. Discovery now seems inevitable and possibly imminent. Even if we never find other life in our Solar System, we might still detect it on any one of thousands of known exoplanets.”

The age-old question remains “Are we alone in the universe?” and while everyone has a different view on whether aliens do in fact exist, we may finally have the answer we’ve all been waiting for when the James Webb Space Telescope is finally launched into space in 2021. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

China to Launch Ambitious Asteroid-Comet Mission in 2022

By Mike Wall 

The spacecraft will explore a near-Earth asteroid and an odd rock in the asteroid belt.

The asteroid 2016 HO3 has an orbit around the sun that keeps it as a constant companion of Earth.

(Image: © NASA/JPL-Caltech )

China is expanding its robotic space-exploration plans far beyond the moon.

The nation, whose Chang'e 4 spacecraft pulled off the first-ever soft landing on the lunar far side this past January, aims to launch a bold mission just three years from now that will explore both an asteroid and a comet, according to China's state-run Xinhua news agency.

The current plan, which is still under discussion, calls for a probe to visit and collect samples from the small near-Earth asteroid 2016 HO3 (also known as Kamo'oalewa).

• Related: Chang'e 4 in Pictures: China on the Moon's Far Side

"Then, the probe will fly back to the proximity of Earth, and a return capsule will be released to bring the samples back to Earth," Xinhua reported today (April 18), citing a China National Space Administration official. "After that, the probe will continue its journey. With the assistance of the gravity of Earth and Mars, it will finally arrive at the main asteroid belt and orbit the Comet 133P to explore it."

Comet 133P/Elst-Pizarro is not your typical icy wanderer. Rather, it's an odd hybrid beast known as a "main-belt comet" — an asteroid-belt body that has displayed comet-like activity in the past. Indeed, 133P also has an asteroid designation: 7968 Elst-Pizarro.

The object may in fact be an "active asteroid," a cosmic class with just a handful of known members. A recent addition to this list is the near-Earth space rock Bennu, which NASA's OSIRIS-REx probe has been exploring up close since late last year. OSIRIS-REx has observed numerous ejections of dust particles from the 1,650-foot-wide (500 meters) Bennu, the cause of which remains a mystery.

The planned Chinese mission will likely last about 10 years, Xinhua reported. During that time, the spacecraft will gather a variety of data, which will help scientists better understand the two objects' composition, structure, orbit, rotation, shape and size, among other characteristics.

China is not alone in its desire to return samples from an asteroid. OSIRIS-REx will return pieces of Bennu to Earth in September 2023, if all goes according to plan. And Japan's Hayabusa2 mission has already snagged bits of the 3,000-foot-wide (900 m) asteroid Ryugu. This material is scheduled to land on our planet in late 2020. (The original Hayabusa mission brought tiny pieces of the stony asteroid Itokawa home in 2010.)

China also intends to snag some moon rocks, as part of its ambitious and ongoing Chang'e lunar program. The Chang'e 5 sample-return mission will launch toward Earth's nearest neighbor this December, if all goes according to plan. 

• The Greatest Asteroid Encounters of All Time! 
• Asteroid Basics: A Space Rock Quiz 
• Watch China Land on the Moon's Far Side in This Awesome Video!

Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now.

Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

The Moon's Surface Is Totally Cracked

Could alien life be hiding in the clouds of Venus?

According to a new study, the ever-changing appearance of Venus' clouds may indicate that microbial life can survive in the venusian atmosphere. This artist’s impression shows the clouds above the surface of Venus.

ESA

When it comes to searching for life elsewhere in the solar system, astronomers typically fixate on Mars or the handful of ice-encrusted moons around Jupiter and Saturn. But according to a new study, to find extraterrestrial life, we may only need to look to our nearest neighbor — Venus. 

In a paper published March 30 in the journal Astrobiology, an international team of researchers suggests that the thick and acidic atmosphere of Venus may actually serve as a potential safe haven for microbial life. In the hypothesis paper, they not only present multiple lines of evidence showing the venusian clouds could harbor extreme forms of life, but also show that airborne life on Venus would help explain the fluctuating appearance of the planet’s clouds — a mystery that has plagued astronomers for nearly a century. 

Although scientists have debated the habitability of Venus’ atmosphere for many decades — Carl Sagan co-authored a paper on the topic in 1963 — our sister world is often still ignored as a target for astrobiological research. This is primarily because the surface of Venus is now almost undoubtedly inhospitable to life, sporting temperatures of over 860 degrees Fahrenheit (450 Celsius) and surface pressures about 90 times greater than those found on Earth. However, despite the fact that Venus is now a hellish landscape (largely due to a run-away greenhouse effect), at one point, the planet looked a lot more like Earth does today. 

“Venus had plenty of time to evolve life on its own,” said lead author Sanjay Limaye, a planetary scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Space Science and Engineering Center, in a press release. In fact, previous research suggests that Venus could have once maintained a habitable climate with liquid water on its surface for as long as 2 billion years. “That’s much longer than is believed to have occurred on Mars,” he said. 

This would have allowed life to initially form on the surface of Venus (when the toxic planet looked more like present-day Earth) before eventually migrating up into the venusian clouds. Although this scenario may seem unlikely, on Earth, microorganisms such as bacteria can (and do) get swept high up into the atmosphere. According to co-author David Smith of NASA’s Ames Research Center, by using specialized research balloons, scientists have even found such high-altitude microorganisms surviving up to 25 miles (41 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface. 

Furthermore, as the new paper points out, a series of space probes sent to Venus between 1962 and 1978 showed that, though the surface of Venus is not conducive to life, the venusian atmosphere very well could be. At altitudes between 25 and 37 miles (40 and 60 kilometers), the atmospheric temperature of Venus ranges between about 90°F and 160°F (30°C to 70°C), and the pressure is almost the same as you would find at sea level on our own planet. On the other hand, the acidic, sulfur-laden venusian air is rather toxic — that is, at least to most forms of life. 

Over the years, though, scientists have compiled a large catalog of microbes that are known to survive and thrive in incredibly harsh environments here on Earth. One such organism is the humble tardigrade — a microscopic animal (often called a “water bear”) that can survive even the most extreme conditions. These hardy critters have been found almost everywhere on the planet, ranging from the driest deserts to the tallest mountaintops. In 2007, researchers even found that Tardigrades could survive up to 10 days in the irradiated vacuum of space.

Tardigrades are one of the most resilient forms of life on Earth. These microscopic animals can go decades without food or water, can exist in the most extreme temperatures, and can survive in the harsh, radiation-filled vacuum of space.

NASA/N. Ottawa/O. Meckes/Eye of Science/Science Source Images

So, is it possible a certain type of microorganism could endure living in Venus’ highly toxic atmosphere? It may not be probable, but it is certainly possible. 

“On Earth, we know that life can thrive in very acidic conditions, can feed on carbon dioxide, and produce sulfuric acid,” said co-author Rakesh Mogul, a professor of biological chemistry at California State Polytechnic University, Pomono, in a press release. Considering this, Mogul says it’s worth noting that the atmosphere of Venus is primarily made of carbon dioxide and water containing lots of sulfuric acid, meaning the toxic clouds do not necessarily rule out venusian life. 

Perhaps most importantly, according to the paper, the physical and chemical conditions within Venus’ atmosphere allow for microorganisms to not only exist, but also contribute to the persistently changing appearance of the planet’s clouds. “Venus shows some episodic dark, sulfuric rich patches, with contrasts up to 30-40 percent in the ultraviolet, and muted in longer wavelengths,” said Limaye. “These patches persist for days, changing their shape and contrasts continuously, and appear to be scale dependent.” 

The researchers also point out that, based on previous spectroscopic observations, the dark patches are made up of particles that are almost the same size and shape as some light-absorbing bacteria found here on Earth. According to Limaye and Mogul, this means that the atmospheric patches could be living colonies of microorganisms, similar to algae blooms commonly found in large bodies of water on Earth. However, every instrument used to sample Venus’ atmosphere so far has been incapable of distinguishing between inorganic and organic compounds. 

So for now, it seems, the question of whether extraterrestrial life floats above the surface of Venus remains a mystery. “To really know, we need to go there and sample the clouds,” said Mogul. “Venus could be an exciting new chapter in astrobiology exploration.”

{ http://www.astronomy.com/ }

Drake Equation Revision Hugely Ups Odds of Intelligent Alien Life

A new study revises the famous Drake equation and gives optimists some more support.

Mankind doesn’t explore space solely in search of extraterrestrials, but we keep our eyes peeled. Still, scientists know that the chances of happening across a fellow traveler in the great beyond are minimal — and they wrap their heads around the infinitesimal odds using the Drake Equation, a seven-variable way of deriving the chance of active civilizations existing beyond Earth.

But equations get older and equations get wrong. The Drake Equation, which takes into account various factors like the rate of star formation, the fraction of stars that could form planetary systems, the number habitable planets in those systems, and so on, is now 55 years old. It doesn’t reflect the new information SETI researchers have collected since the 1960s.

A new study published in the journal Astrobiology seeks to integrate new exoplanet data as part of the Drake Equation while demonstrating the role of “pessimism” and “optimism” in estimating the odds of finding E.T. (you don’t find what you don’t look for).

“The question of whether advanced civilizations exist elsewhere in the universe has always been vexed with three large uncertainties in the Drake equation,” said University of Rochester astronomer and study coauthor Adam Frank in a statement. “We’ve known for a long time approximately how many stars exist. We didn’t know how many of those stars had planets that could potentially harbor life, how often life might evolve and lead to intelligent beings, and how long any civilizations might last before becoming extinct.”

Estimates derived by projects running under NASA’s Kepler satellite and a few other instruments suggest that out of the estimated 2 x 10^22 stars in the known universe, 20 percent have planets that reside in habitable zones that have temperatures, atmospheres, and other traits that could support life. So that takes care of one uncertainty.

That leaves two other questions:

1. How often would life evolve?
2. How long could those civilizations survive for?

That last one is a particularly tough question to answer, since we can only really work off the history of human civilization — and we haven’t died off yet.

That’s where the notion of pessimism and optimism arise. Frank and Sullivan write that their method requires only establishing how low the probability that humans are the only intelligent species to have ever evolved is. They call this the pessimism line. “If the actual probability is greater than the pessimism line,” said Frank, “then a technological species and civilization has likely happened before.”

Using current SETI and exoplanet data, Frank and Sullivan ended up calculating this number at one in 10 billion trillion. That’s incredibly small — which means the odds that another intelligent species has evolved are very, very good.

“Think of it this way,” said Frank. “Before our result you’d be considered a pessimist if you imagined the probability of evolving a civilization on a habitable planet were, say, one in a trillion. But even that guess, one chance in a trillion, implies that what has happened here on Earth with humanity has in fact happened about a 10 billion other times over cosmic history!”

The researchers emphasize that this revised interpretation of the Drake equation accounts for the entire 13.78 billion year history of the universe — while the original localizes the odds of finding E.T. to the present day.

That being said, optimism for finding alien life has never been higher. After all, three famous names just started a multi-million dollar project to look for aliens in Alpha Centauri — the closest star system to the Earth — and some prominent scientists think there’s a good chance we’ll find something special. There’s certainly never been a time to be an E.T. optimist.

• Media via NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/CXC/STScI

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

How Earth got its oceans: Hydrogen discovered in samples of asteroid dust suggests more than HALF of our planet's water came from space rocks

• Researchers studied samples from asteroid Itokawa collected by Hayabusa (1)
• The study revealed the asteroid, thought to be dry, was 'enriched in water'
• The team suggests asteroid like this could have delivered half of Earth's water 

By CHEYENNE MACDONALD FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

Scientists have detected traces of water in dust from an asteroid previously assumed to be dry, adding new support for a theory that could explain how Earth’s oceans came to be.

In a new study, researchers from Arizona State University re-examined samples collected by Japan’s first Hayabusa probe back in 2010.

The spacecraft captured roughly 1,500 particles in total when it visited the asteroid Itokawa during the first-ever asteroid sampling mission.

The new analysis revealed a substantial amount of water and hydrogen compositions that are ‘indistinguishable from Earth,’ suggesting water-rich asteroids are far more common than previously thought.

Researchers now say an impact from a similar asteroid in our planet’s history could have been responsible for delivering as much as half of Earth’s water.

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In a new study, researchers from Arizona State University re-examined samples collected by Japan’s first Hayabusa probe back in 2010. The spacecraft captured roughly 1,500 particles in total when it visited the asteroid Itokawa during the first-ever asteroid sampling mission

‘We found the samples we examined were enriched in water compared to the average for inner solar system objects,’ said postdoctoral scholar Ziliang Jin.

Itokawa is what’s know as an S-type asteroid and is thought to have broken off of a larger object that measured at least 12 miles wide.

It’s estimated to be about 1,800 feet long and 700 to 1,000 feet wide, and circles the sun every 18 months.

‘S-type asteroids are one of the most common objects in the asteroid belt,’ said co-author Maitrayee Bose.

‘They originally formed at a distance from the sun of one-third to three times Earth’s distance.’

Despite a series of impacts that occurred to produce today’s Itokawa millions of years ago, the team says the asteroid retained its water.

‘The particles we analyzed came from a part of Itokawa called the Muses Sea,’ says Bose.

The new analysis revealed a substantial amount of water and hydrogen compositions that are ‘indistinguishable from Earth,’ suggesting water-rich asteroids are far more common than previously thought. The particles (shown) are just half the thickness of a human hair

‘It's an area on the asteroid that's smooth and dust-covered.’

‘Although the samples were collected at the surface, we don't know where these grains were in the original parent body,’ Jin adds.

‘But our best guess is that they were buried more than 100 meters deep within it.’

‘The minerals have hydrogen isotopic compositions that are indistinguishable from Earth,’ the Jin said.

The water content of different materials, including primitive Earth and Itokawa, is plotted in the chart above

In the samples, each of which are just half the thickness of a human hair, the researchers found surprising amounts of water.

The discovery suggests these asteroids, assumed to be dry, may be home to much more water than previously thought.

‘This means S-type asteroids and the parent bodies of ordinary chondrites are likely a critical source of water and several other elements for the terrestrial planets,’ Bose said.

‘And we can say this only because of in-situ isotopic measurements on returned samples of asteroid regolith -- their surface dust and rocks.

‘That makes these asteroids high-priority targets for exploration.’

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